#her background looks so dark when u add in the tws i swear she had a happy childhood | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

awaylaughing · 2 years

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More Echo lore? More Echo lore! Mostly backstory stuff I need to blort out somewhere and a txt file isn’t itching the urge this time. It’s long, sorry mobile users. TW for discussions of abuse, drugs and alcohol, the sex trade

Echo as born to a very young woman in a bad situation and adopted out privately in 1977. She was raised by her older single mother Daphné and named Camille.

Daphné was a fantastically intelligent and artistic Cajun woman who’d been the wife of a university prof. She’s the one who took all his notes for him, kept them in order, typed up his research, found and synthesized other research so he could use it, etc. Naturally, when they got older he ran off with a young co-ed and left her with no credit and very little money (they settled out of court, she had regrets) and old car she had no use for.

Echo never knew the prof, but she knew she didn’t like him but she did like his car, and her mother’s garden. These would become defining parts of her unlife and life respectively.

Daphne opted to teach Camille at home, distrustful of Lousiana public schools after her own suffering as a French speaker. Echo didn’t speak English until she was almost 10 as a result when she made her first same-age friend. In fact she spoke Spanish first, Daphne was friends with a lot of local cultural preservationists and that included Bayou Lafourche’s Brule Spanish speakers, though today Echo’s Spanish is more Northwestern Mexican impacted.

Camille went into Ecology at Tulane when she was only 16 (Sept bday + accelerated homeschool learning) but she washed out at 18/going into third year after Daphne died and she lost her meagre financial support due to her slipping grades.

This is how she met Michael. Michael painted himself as the sensitive musician sort, and the lonely and grief-strike Camille fell right for it and ended up following him and his band on tour. Turned out Michael was a manipulative and often emotionally abusive asshole, after a year she finally had enough and after catching him with another woman she stole all the band’s good gear and took off.

Michael was big mad but he stuck to his image as Tormented Romantic Artist and wrote a song called “Camille” that’s this lovelorn post-punk ballad that really plays up her Frenchness in a distinctly “jaded urbane Parisian” way. Echo supposes it’s better than a misogynistic breakup song but she still fucking hates it not least because she’s from very rural Louisana thank you very much.

Sadly it’s considered one of the breakout songs of their breakout album. 2002 was a rough year for Echo’s radio listening habit; it’s how she got into classical.

The Michael years weren’t just bad because he sucked, she’d started drinking after Daphné died and it got worse and eventually the cultural of road travelling musicians got to her and she got tangled up in drugs pretty badly.

1998 was also not a great year, she didn’t have a stable income and found herself in the sex trade. While there’s nothing inherently bad with that, Echo very much didn’t want to be there: she just didn’t see other options.

She started attending AA meetings to try and get her life in order. Then promptly met Brian and ended up being fed vampire blood. Bright side: really made the drug cravings go away.

Is very, very ashamed of the fact she used her history to then exploit similarly desperate people for Ypotryll regardless of how in control she was given the unknowing ghoul things she had going. This more than anything is something she wishes she could make up for and why she tends to help humans when she can.

Weird bright side to all this, her familiarity with destructive and dangerous cravings makes her great at knowing when she can’t risk feeding directly from people. And some of the “managing your urges” techniques still translate.

Darkly funny ending note: she was turned four days before the whole “clan Ravnos tore itself apart” thing started. Her survival of that event made local news in the region after park rangers were baffled by a swathe of violent animals death. They feared it was rabies but lucky for them it was just an isolated Ravnos with no humans or kindred to maul. Echo says this is the only part of her disappearing and dying that ever made it to print.

#echo the courier #i'd share stuff about amen but he's lurking in the corner of my brain brandishing a knfe and hissing about how i better keep my mouth shut #they're a problem child #echo is happy to talk about her life past present and future #vtm night road #long post #tw abuse #tw drugs #tw alchoholism #tw sex work #her background looks so dark when u add in the tws i swear she had a happy childhood

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